I DON’T BELIEVE in séances, but standing in Eric’s room at midnight, I understand why mediums in movies always want you to bring artifacts of the person’s life—shirts, a wallet, jewelry. It’s like a piece of them is still attached to it. It’s why I can feel my mom every time I go into her room. And now, it’s why I half expect to see Eric materialize in front of me at any minute, even though I know he’s still at the hospital. I get undressed and take a shower in his bathroom, trying but failing to ignore that this is the same place Eric stands, the same water that arcs and bends and flows around his sharp edges and soft curves, the same towels that get to touch him in places I’ve never seen.
What am I doing here? In New Hampshire? In his house? With fresh reminders of everything I’ll never have at every turn. I suddenly want to be home. Such a strong yearning emanates from my gut that I think about calling a cab, with no regard to how much a five-hour drive might cost or how uncomfortable I’d be in the backseat of a strange car, a stranger navigating it. I just want to get out of here.
But then I remember Aja in the next room. And I know I can’t leave him alone.
I towel off and hurriedly get dressed, in a T-shirt and track pants from Eric’s drawer (sniffing them first to make sure they’re clean, so I don’t have a reaction; they smell like laundry soap). I cover the bare mattress in clean sheets, crawl in, and close my eyes, but I can’t sleep. Eric is everywhere. His scent, his possessions, the indent where his body lies night after night—his presence is palpable. But it’s like the air—all around me, but impossible to touch.
twenty-four
ERIC
ELLIE LOOKS OLDER and younger at the same time, if that’s possible. Her flat-ironed hair now has streaks of cerulean, the same color her lips used to turn when she devoured those artificial ice pops in the summer. Raspberry, her favorite, was inexplicably blue.
But she’s tiny, impossibly tiny in the hospital bed, as if she’s Alice in Wonderland and just drank the shrinking potion, her shoulders turning in on themselves, her body being eaten by the thin mattress.
I turn my attention to her nose, where a tiny diamond rests in the curve above her nostril, and try not to have a coronary about Stephanie’s letting her get a piercing. At least it’s not a tattoo.
While I study her, breathing in the relief that her body is still full of life, no matter how she’s decorated it, she stares right back at me, her eyes cold and unflinching. I wait—does she still hate me? I’m afraid to say anything—afraid to say the wrong thing.
And then she says: “Daddy,” and I think my knees might buckle from relief.
“Ellie.”
“Daddy, I’m so sorry.” Her face crumples in segments like an accordion, starting with her forehead. Tears leak down her cheeks.
“Oh, honey,” I say, scooping her into my arms. I sit on the edge of her hospital bed, letting her drench my shoulder. I stroke her blue hair until her ragged breathing slowly regains an even cadence.
She extricates herself from my arms and sits back, wiping her nose with the back of her bare arm. I reach over for a tissue from the counter and hand it to her.
“What were you thinking?” I ask, reaching up to her face and tucking an errant lock behind her ear.
“I don’t know,” she says, looking down. “Darcy said it was just like regular weed.”
“But even the weed, Ellie. This isn’t you,” I say, flicking the blue strands grazing her shoulder to emphasize my point.
She jerks away, anger flashing in her eyes. “You don’t know who I am.”
I drop my hand. Look at her. Let her words sink in. “You’re right. I don’t know who you are. Not anymore. But, Ellie, I’m trying. I really want to know.”
“What, by reading some stupid books?” she snaps.
I flinch.
“Yeah, by reading some books,” I say, mindful to keep my tone calm, steady. “Reading your journal. I didn’t have much choice, did I? You wouldn’t exactly speak to me.”
“I wonder why.” She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms in front of her chest.
“Ellie, I know what I said was awful, but I’m sorry. I’ve apologized a hundred times. You know, people say things, sometimes, that they don’t mean. It happens. People make mistakes. I made a mistake.”
“You think this is all because of what you said?”
“Well, yeah.” I sit up a little straighter. “Isn’t it?”
She scoffs. “Oh my God. Mom was right. You are so emotionally clueless.”
I try to ignore this dig and wait for her to continue. She doesn’t. She just turns her head and looks out the window, as if the street lamp is a completely fascinating piece of technology she’s never seen before.
“Are you going to—”
“You left me!” she screams, startling me. “You left! You said when you were divorcing Mom that you would still always be there. Just not in the same house. But you weren’t!”
Jubilee flashes in my mind. Her rumpled body in the passenger seat of my car, shoulders heaving at her mother’s betrayal. Is that how Ellie has felt this whole time? The thought levels me.
“And you took him with you.”
“Aja?”
“It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it? A son. Someone that’s not complicated and emotional. A kid that’s easy to understand. And you got him and then you had your chance to leave. To have some easy life without me and you took it.”
My eyes grow bigger with each thought that tumbles from her mouth. I don’t even know where to begin when it’s my turn to speak. “Aja,” I start, “is anything but uncomplicated and unemotional. And I think I’m doing a worse job with him than I ever did with you, if that helps at all. And this job, what I moved for? It’s just a temporary assignment. Six months. Didn’t your mother tell you that?”
“Yeah,” she says. “But that’s what they all start out as, and then you do a good job and they want you to stay.”
“Why do you think that?”
“That’s what Darcy said. Her dad moved them here on a ‘temporary’ one-year assignment.” She makes finger quotes around the word “temporary” and it strikes me as very adult. I wonder if Darcy taught her that, too. “And they’ve been here for two years now with no sign of leaving.”
Oh, if only it had been temporary, I think, but I bite my tongue.
“Well, this is temporary. I’m filling in for the VP’s maternity leave and she is coming back. We’re working on the transition now. Besides, even if they did ask me to stay, I never would. I would never leave you. Not for good.”
She sniffs. “Even if they asked you to be partner?”
I look at her sad eyes. Her nose stud glints in the fluorescent light. And I say with utter confidence: “Even if they asked me to be partner.”
She gives a little nod and looks down at her hands. I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m not sure if she believes me. I’m not sure if I can undo all the damage I’ve unwittingly done. But I am sure that I’m moving back, as soon as I can. And that I’ll never leave her again.
And then, for the second time in that hospital room, I think of Jubilee.